ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Strix Graphics Card Review

We discovered a couple of months ago that NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1060 delivers excellent 1080p performance and admirable 1440p performance, so what happens when ASUS straps on an even larger cooler and gives the card an overclock? Well, we get the Strix, an LED-equipped beast of a card that runs cool and quiet.

Tests: Futuremark 3DMark, Unigine Heaven & Catzilla

Futuremark 3DMark

I don’t like to overdo “time demos”, but I do love running some hands-off benchmarks that you at home can run as well (provided you have a license) so that you can accurately compare your performance to ours. It goes without saying that any synthetic testing would have to include Futuremark, and in particular for high-end cards, 3DMark’s Fire Strike test.

3DMark includes a number of different game tests, but today’s graphics cards are so powerful, the Fire Strike test is really the only one that makes sense. At 1080p, even modest GPUs can deliver decent performance. A great thing about Fire Strike is that the official tests encompass three different resolutions, including 4K, making it perfect for our testing.

Considering the fact that ASUS’ Strix model GTX 1060 is pre-overclocked, it makes sense that we’d see it outperform the Founders Edition ever-so-slightly. Overclocking the card further can of course improve that even more – though your mileage may vary, as I’ll tackle on the next page.

Unigine Heaven

It’s hard to tell at this point if Heaven is ever going to see a new update, as it’s been quite a while since the last one, but what we have today is still a fantastic benchmark to run. That’s thanks to the fact that it’s free, an also because it can still prove so demanding on today’s highest-end GPUs. It’s also a great test for tessellation performance, as it lets you increase or decrease its intensity. For testing, I stick with ‘Normal’ tessellation.

With Unigine, the ASUS Strix doesn’t just beat out the regular GTX 1060, but even AMD’s last-gen high-end Radeon R9 Nano (though that card takes up much less space!).

Catzilla

Meow hear this: there’s a new benchmark in town that promises to be purrfect for testing 4K resolutions. So, that’s just what I’ve used it for. The test consists of a cat innocently roaming a street until chaos ensues. Before long, this feline is mowing down buildings with its laser eyes, destroying GPU performance at the same time.

Catzilla backs up the theme we’ve seen up to this point, with the ASUS Strix sitting comfortably ahead of most of the line-up here. Interestingly, while the R9 Nano fell short of the Strix in Unigine’s Heaven, the roles have been reversed in Catzilla.

Rob Williams

Rob founded Techgage in 2005 to be an 'Advocate of the consumer', focusing on fair reviews and keeping people apprised of news in the tech world. Catering to both enthusiasts and businesses alike; from desktop gaming to professional workstations, and all the supporting software.